


Turn Your Face to the Stars

by BatWingsandBlackCats



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Drabbles, F/F, Fluff, Hollstein - Freeform, Stars, a little domestic fluff?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-05 01:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4160340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BatWingsandBlackCats/pseuds/BatWingsandBlackCats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carmilla loves the stars, both the ones in the sky, and the ones living in Laura.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turn Your Face to the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This happened over the course of being up and wide awake around four AM three nights in a row. I really had no idea what I was doing through a large portion of this--I was literally spewing nonsense and ended up really liking it. I really liked the style and flow of some other pieces I've seen on here, so I wanted to try out something similar :) I hope you guys like it, comments and critiques are always welcome!
> 
> The title is a line from The Birthday Massacre's "The Other Side" (although I listened to Dmitri Shostakovich's Waltz №2 while writing most of it. Carm posted it and it somehow fit the mood.)  
> (sorry for any mistakes i missed)

Carmilla sat on the windowsill, one leg draped over the side, and the other propped up with her back resting against the frame. She was bundled up in Laura’s oversized Silas hoodie, and a pair of sweats, but her feet were bare. (She liked feeling the rough brick scraping against her toes. She liked tactile sensations, both soft and rough and hot and cold, wet and dry. It grounded her, reminding her that she was at Silas and not in a pine box. Of all her senses, she trusted touch the most (closely followed by scent) especially on a bad day.) She really didn’t need to wear the sweatshirt, vampire constitution and all, but it was soft and it smelled like Laura, and she’d started indulging in more comforts since Laura. The tiny human had softened her considerably. Although the dimwit squad didn’t need to know that. 

It was late september, the nights were just starting to get chilly and the sky was clear, making it a bit colder. She preferred these kinds of nights, where the cold was there, but it was gentle, and wood smoke floated on the air from a distant chimney. (This night was kind to her, the cold biting her skin with gentle teeth, the smoke filling her nose and chasing away the stench of rotten blood.) Carmilla had been looking at the stars for at least an hour now, listening to Laura’s steady breathing behind her. (The stars were about the only thing she trusted completely when it came to her sight. Even more so than Laura sometimes. The stars reminded her she wasn’t in her pine box, whereas she’d seen Laura in danger and it had burned itself into her skull, and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t scrub away the ashes. Her mind had been cruel enough to conjure images of Laura being hurt and ripped away from her, or Laura running from her in fear, but her mind never denied her the stars. She hoped the images of Laura leaving would fade someday.) She smiled a little to herself. Laura. This little tiny human had settled into all her cracks, both small and gaping, softening her edges and fixing the broken bones and torn flesh inside her. Laura was slowly stitching her up with her soft touches and gentle kisses, with her laughter and blinding smiles. Her tears, too. Laura filled each empty space within her with bright light and warmth, her soft smiles soothing the screams that sometimes tore at her chest, threatening to split her open right down the middle. Laura was the light and the gentleness that coaxed the vampire from her nightmares and her bloody coffins, the visions of Maman and the knives that stabbed at her. She challenged the dark that lurked in Carmilla, and while both of them knew that simply loving Carmilla wouldn’t fix the nightmares and the trauma and the years upon years spent with Maman, Carmilla was content. Laura dulled the knives and ripped open the pine boxes, washed the blood from her and chased away the shadows of Maman. Carmilla looked back towards Laura and smiled. This little human had no idea the power she possessed.  
Another half hour or so of stargazing passed before Carmilla heard rustling and uneven breaths behind her. 

“Mmf...Carm...?” Laura mumbled, sitting up in bed.

“Over here, cupcake,” Carmilla said softly.

“Did you have a nightmare?” Laura asked quietly, rubbing her eyes and padding over to the window on bare feet. She took Carmilla’s warm hand in her own, lacing their fingers together.

The vampire shook her head. “No, I just wanted to look at the stars,” She murmured, running her thumb over Laura’s knuckles. “I’ve always loved these kinds of nights....” her voice was a bit wistful. She looked up realizing that Laura was only in a tank top and her red plaid sweats. “Are you cold? I can shut the window--”

Laura shook her head, kissing Carmilla’s cheek. “No, no...I’m fine.” She smiled softly. “I love these nights too...I’d always leave the window open even though dad would rant to me about axe murderers crawling in through my window,”

Carmilla huffed a laugh, a smirk tugging at her lips. “I’m sure you are entirely capable of fending off axe murderers, cutie,”

“That’s what the two cans of mace on my nightstand were for,” She said, sitting down on the stool opposite Carmilla. 

“What? No bear spray?” Carmilla said, feigning shock.

“That was under the bed,” Laura grimaced, despite her small smile.

Carmilla grinned, her eyes crinkling slightly as she laughed. God, it’d been such a long time since anyone made her laugh or smile like this. If she was being honest with herself, nobody had ever made her laugh like this. Laura laughed with her, and there was that light, seeping into the vampire’s cracks and sewing a few more stitches, pulling her heart together slowly. It was like this little human had swallowed stars. No, the stars weren’t separate. She was born with the stars inside her, they were part of her and they shone in her eyes and her hands and her voice. They fell from her fingertips and her lips and embedded themselves ever so gently in Carmilla’s skin when they touched. They snuck under her skin and worked their way into her chest until she could feel the warmth there. Sometimes she couldn’t find it, and her chest would feel hollow and cold like it used to, but then Laura would touch her hand or her chin and the stars would eek themselves back under her skin, waking the others until they all began to glow bright enough for Carmilla to find once again. 

Carmilla was pulled from her thoughts when she suddenly noticed the absence of Laura’s hand in her own. She watched her small frame move around their tiny excuse for a kitchen, those star bearing hands reaching for two mugs and a packet of hot cocoa mix, and then Carmilla’s soy milk carton. Laura poured the mix into her mug, added milk, and placed it in the microwave. She took Carmilla’s mug and poured the blood into it. (It was fresh, LaF having snagged it from the lab. Ginger number two was proving to be less and less annoying as the months passed. They remembered that the vampire’s favorite was O negative.) Laura finished pouring it, and then paused, and Carmilla could just imagine her little scrunched up face as she tried to remember how much time to punch in on the microwave. (Carmilla had gotten it down to a science over the years, and had taught Laura how to do it. She was surprised when her little human had asked, but Laura had insisted that she wanted to learn. Her argument was that Carmilla had gotten rather good at making cocoa for her, and she wanted to reciprocate.) Laura’s figure perked up as she remembered, and she placed the mug inside, punching in the numbers triumphantly. Carmilla grinned at her back, some of Laura’s stars shining in her dark eyes as they followed the cascade of brown hair down Laura’s back. Fading sun streaks from a summer spent outside laying beneath trees and running through the woods with Carmilla and Danny on her tail gave way to a darker, richer brown at the crown of her head.  
A breeze blew in through the window Carmilla still sat in, the cold and the smoke tangling itself in Laura’s hair, blowing it around her shoulders and raising goosebumps across her warm skin, which was rapidly losing it’s slight tan. Carmilla watched the hairs on her arms raise, and a shiver go down her spine. Laura turned and handed Carmilla her mug, rubbing sleep from her eyes with the back of her free hand. 

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Carmilla murmured, leaning forward to take the mug and to kiss Laura’s cheek. Another star left Laura and worked it’s way into the flesh of Carmilla’s lips.

Laura smiled and took her own mug, sitting back down on the stool. Carmilla watched her with Laura’s stars in her eyes and a smile tugging at her lips. This human was the light in the dark of her three hundred and thirty-five years. She was the love she’d longed for in her terribly long life. It didn't feel too terrible anymore though. She’d do it all over again, to wait for Laura. 

Laura looked up at her, a grin spreading across her face, and that confused yet slightly embarrassed look graced her features. “What?” She asked, a small laugh escaping her lips, and a slight blush spreading across her cheeks.

Carmilla’s smile only widened as she leaned forward, capturing Laura’s lips in a kiss. Iron and chocolate mingled, and they both looked slightly dazed when they parted. Laura stole one more small kiss before sitting back again, taking Carmilla’s hand. The stars in her eyes and her voice nearly rendered the vampire both deaf and blind. Carmilla had no idea how she deserved this little being of light. Laura had her dark corners as well, her dim moments shrouded by tears and the memory of broken glass and charred metal and screaming and sirens, but she’d never lost her warmth. She’d never lost the stars in her and they shone brightly in the dark, forever leading Carmilla home. 

“You...” Carmilla paused, looking for the right words. She smiled a little realizing that the simple words were enough. “Du hast die Sterne in dienen Augen,”

Laura laughed, shaking her head. “I love it when you speak German, but do you mind saying that in English for the non-multi-lingual human?”

Carmilla’s smile widened, blush touching her own cheeks. “I said, you have the stars in your eyes,” She whispered. 

The vampire watched as Laura’s eyes widened and her cheeks burned red. The younger woman looked down at their clasped hands, fiddling with Carmilla’s thumb as she mumbled something. Carmilla smiled, taking in all that she was in that moment. Her beautiful girlfriend, sitting in the dark with her and drinking cocoa from her Tardis mug, (which had become rather endearing to Carmilla as time passed. It was so inexplicably Laura.) the moonlight pooling in the hollows of her collar bones and bathing her shoulders and the right side of her face in silver light, that light further softening each gentle curve of her face, and complimenting the stars in her chocolate brown eyes framed by stray strands of messy and darkening hair. Laura had only walked the earth for nineteen years, and yet she held a vastness in her that Carmilla was desperate to explore, though she was content with discovering one piece at a time. She did know two things though, the truth of these two things burning deep in her dimly beating heart. 

Laura was light. 

Laura was love.


End file.
